Refugees in Calais: ‘A charitable scheme to help isolated children is one thing; a proper effort to fulfil our responsibilities as Europeans… is another.’
Photograph: Action Press/REX/Shutterstock

What do we see each morning, post-Brexit vote, when we look in the mirror? Is it a great first-world power that knows its place in an interconnected world partly of its own design, and assumes the responsibilities that flow from that? Or is it a diminished place – shorn of perspective, hollowed out in terms of compassion? As officials and the media debated the possibility that the British authorities may conduct dental checks to verify the ages of refugees granted entry to the country from Calais, that judgment would have been a fine one.

The idea was proposed by David Davies, the Conservative MP for Monmouth. There are many elected members within our House of Commons with questioning minds and the facility for good judgment. If one examines Davies’ record, factoring in perhaps his attack on same-sex marriage as “barking mad” and advocacy of chain gangs for feckless fathers, it quickly becomes clear that he is not one of them. But he knew enough to understand that in this angry time he could unleash his dehumanising proposal and watch it gain traction.

He knew he could rely on the Sun to embrace the idea with a front-page witticism: “Tell us the tooth,” ran its banner headline. He knew that his idea would grant him, if not a day, then a morning in the limelight, and there he was on the Today programme. That was him again, crossing swords with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain and insisting: “We need to be hard-nosed about this.”

The glow endured until late morning, when the Home Office intervened to declare the idea unethical. But he knew an idea that a year ago would have been instantly dismissed as sinister would find its place in a public discourse increasingly toxified by indecency and incivility. He knows that when we look in the mirror, we are not our best selves.

MP David Davies proposed dental checks to verify the ages of refugees. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

One can raise a practical objection to what Davies, fearing that adult refugees were being admitted to the country as children, had proposed. The British Dental Association, aghast, did just that, saying the tests he would like were “an inaccurate method for assessing age”.

But efficacy is not the issue here. Are we a nation that would stoop to treating the vulnerable human beings we would purport to help as livestock, to be collated, corralled and verified by their individual body parts? Are we willing to put those we should be rescuing from peril at further risk with a procedure that would produce no guaranteed benefit? “It is inappropriate and unethical to take radiographs of people when there is no health benefit for them,” warns the dental association. Have we reached the stage where we would apply a lower set of safeguards to migrants than we might apply to ourselves?

While the Davies dental initiative collapsed under the weight of its contradictions, its reception said much about our state of mind with relation to the European refugee crisis and specifically the continuing problems at Calais. On Tuesday, writing in these pages, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, departed from the diplomatic argot of his profession to insist that the British government intensify its efforts to identify and resettle child migrants.

The UK must fulfil its moral duty to Calais’ unaccompanied children | Bernard Cazeneuve

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The view in many countries is that Britain, sour and introverted, is failing to do its bit. In his speech at the Liberal Democrat party conference, Tim Farron spoke of being confronted by an aid worker as he was handing out water bottles to refugees on the Greek coast. “Stop handing out bottles of water,” she said. “Take some fucking refugees.” But the indication, perhaps the evidence, is that we are reluctant to take our fair share. In July a report by the House of Lords European Union committee said: “We deplore the continuing resistance of the UK government to show solidarity with its European partners in helping to relocate such children.” A month earlier, when European leaders agreed a voluntary system for sharing the refugee burden across the continent, the UK opted out.

And this lies at the crux of the discussions. Our preoccupation with migrant children reflects the fact that as children they will encounter the least public resistance. That is inevitable. In its way, it is laudable. We saw pictures of thousands of migrants arriving after a perilous, sometimes murderous, journey on the Mediterranean coast. But it was photographs of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, drowned on a Turkish beach, that pricked the public conscience.

However, let’s not confuse what we are doing with what we should be doing. A charitable scheme to help isolated children – hopefully very young, with features, teeth and teddy bears to prove it – is one thing. A proper effort to fulfil our responsibilities as Europeans, whether or not we are members of the EU, is another.

The migrants conveyed from Calais may be young enough to dispel doubts. It may be, as some suggest, that they are youths whose experiences have aged them. But as we examine them for signs of maturity or worldliness, don’t lose sight of why the issue of age verification has become so important. We want to do right by a handful of children, but it is really a way of shirking our duty to do the right thing.